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Next to him Werther Baumgartner, a sober xenologist pushing an active seventy, smirked and nudged his companion. “There is no joke.”
    “This is impossible!” Anchpura looked to her colleagues for support. “These Pitar—those people out there being guided through the processing lines—aren’t aliens. They’re human. Where’d you pick them up? From a live show on one of the orbiting stations before you came down? Without clearance, I might add, and here instead of across the strait at Lombok, where you belong. Although now that I see the joke, I understand your reasons, if not your motivation.”
    “Aye,” Colin Brookstone put in. “What’s come over you? It’s a fine joke, I admit, but you’ll soon have to call a halt to it.”
    “Siringh is telling you the truth.” Smirk gone, Baumgartner was all serious now, and all scientist. “Believe me, the first time we set eyes on them our reaction was, if anything, more disbelieving than yours.”
    Ambassador-at-large al-Namqiz, who until now had been silent, sputtered a response. “But how can this be? They are as human as you or I, as anyone in this room.” His attention shifted to the tightly packed horde of frantic media representatives who were still fighting to gain entrance to the meeting room. “More human.”
    Lionel Harris-Ferrolk, Baumgartner’s companion in subdued mirth, was the possessor of a reputation that exceeded even that of his two nominal superiors. “Remarkable how after all these years of contact with sapient extraterrestrials we are still hostage to the superficiality of appearance.” His reconstructed eyes, small but penetrating, swept over the diplomats assembled in the room. “You are all right, and you are all wrong. They are human to a remarkable degree—and yet not. Not quite.”
    Al-Namqiz sighed as he took a seat. What had promised to be a traditionally impressive yet routine meet-and-greet had turned into something extraordinary. Eventually he was going to have to face the media. He was not a man, after thirty-four years in the diplomatic service, who desired to do so without answers.
    As his two slightly senior colleagues appeared willing to let him do the explaining, Harris-Ferrolk continued. “What we have in the Pitar is either the most remarkable instance of convergent evolution ever encountered, much less demonstrated, or else possible proof of the old theory that the dispersal of the origins of at least certain kinds of life throughout the galaxy, if not the universe, was by some form of seeds or spores, whether aboard meteorites, comets, or some as yet unidentified vector. The Pitar have been very cooperative. I ask you to keep in mind that despite the astonishing physical similarities, which I might add include internal as well as external features, preliminary studies reveal significant differences in DNA. As well, there are other factors at work that would never permit a Pitar to pass for human, or for that matter a human as Pitar.”
    From the back of the tense, crowded room, a terse question. “What about interbreeding?”
    When Harris-Ferrolk looked nonplussed, the more relaxed Pranchavit spoke up. “That is a question I would have expected to come from a representative of the general media, not a member of the diplomatic corps. However, since it has been asked, based on our studies to date we do not believe that would be possible. The mere act of intercourse, which requires nothing more biologically complex than crude physical coupling, is another matter.” For confirmation he glanced at his two colleagues, who both nodded.
    “Physiological similarities extending beyond physical symmetry and external features suggest the latter should be possible. As we have explained, the Pitar have been most cooperative.” He added drily, “You understand this is speculation only. There has been no experimental confirmation of any of this.”
    “They seem very subdued,” someone else ventured.
    “They are not